Over the last two decades, there has been a significant push in the tech industry to simplify the process of software development by abstracting away the complexities of managing the underlying infrastructure. Serverless computing is a paradigm that takes this goal to its extreme, allowing developers to focus solely on their code and business logic, without worrying about the servers, operating systems, or other infrastructure components. With its promise of increased efficiency and lower overhead, serverless computing has gained popularity and is projected to become a $50 billion market by 2031, according to a recent SkyQuest Technology report.
At its core, serverless computing is a cloud execution model where the cloud provider dynamically allocates the necessary resources to run a specific piece of code. Although the term “serverless” might suggest the absence of servers, they are still very much involved, but the key difference is that the cloud provider takes care of provisioning, managing, and maintaining the servers. This means users are only charged for the compute and storage resources they actually consume, eliminating the need to worry about scaling or infrastructure management. In the ideal scenario, the user interacts only with the code itself, without any need for managing physical or virtual servers, or even containers.
While serverless has been applied in various contexts, it is often associated with “Function-as-a-Service” (FaaS). In this model, developers upload their code, which contains only the business logic, to a serverless platform. The provider handles everything else, including server provisioning, virtual machine management, containerization, and even the complexities of multithreading, all of which would traditionally require additional management. Essentially, the provider abstracts away the operational complexities, allowing developers to focus purely on the functional aspect of their applications.
In practice, serverless computing is designed to simplify the development process by freeing developers from having to manage or provision servers. This shift allows businesses to be more agile, scaling their applications quickly without the burden of handling infrastructure. While serverless computing has had some challenges in the past, its adoption continues to rise as more organizations realize the potential to reduce operational costs and improve development speed. As the technology continues to mature, the role of serverless computing in modern software architecture is only set to expand.